


Numb

by Aaronlisa



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27312847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaronlisa/pseuds/Aaronlisa
Summary: What happens after the events in Prophecy Girl, when everyone goes their separate ways and Buffy's left to deal with the aftermath of the night.
Relationships: Angel/Buffy Summers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16
Collections: I Will Remember You





	Numb

Aside from Buffy, none of them are really dressed to go to the dance at the Bronze. And even if they were, none of them really want to go to the Bronze and pretend that everything in Sunnydale is normal and that an ancient vampire didn't try to open the mouth of Hell in the school's library. There's a part of her that feels guilty as she watches as Giles calls the high school's custodian and tells him about how the library had been damaged during what appears to have been an earthquake. Everyone seems unnaturally quiet as Giles murmurs into the phone about the destruction. She should have killed the Master in his liar Instead she had been weak. 

Willow cautiously makes her way to Buffy and the Slayer smiles at her friend. 

"Cordelia's going to give Xan and I ride home," Willow quietly tells her. 

"Oh?" Buffy asks. 

It seems odd that Cordelia would have anything to do with them. Normally when something bad happens, Cordelia's off running as fast as she can from them so that she can keep her social standing in the school's hierarchy. 

"Yeah, we might stop at the Espresso Pump to get some mochas," Willow says. "We're all pretty wound up." 

Buffy tries to act like she's okay with her friends going off with the girl who tends to make their lives miserable but she clearly fills when Willow starts to babble. 

"Oh no! It's not what you think, I just thought you might want to spend some time with Angel. Like one-on-one time without a third or a fourth wheel. And you know how _Xander_ gets and you look so pretty, it'd be a shame if Angel didn't get a chance to appreciate how pretty you are, not that he doesn't appreciate you because I am pretty positive he does. And you know it's probably going to be Cordy just going on about why she wasn't at the dance because her date stood her up and...." 

"It's okay Wills," Buffy gently interrupts her friend. 

And even though it's not completely _okay_ because sometimes no matter what her friends do, she feels like the third wheel with Xander and Willow (and even sometimes Cordelia) because they've known each other since they were small. But she gets it, her friends wants her to spend sometime with Angel and live the romantic dream. Right now, Buffy would rather go for mochas with her friends and pretend a little longer. 

"You sure?" Willow asks. "Because if you want to come?" 

"I'm sure, go have fun." 

Willow gives her a bright smile before she makes her way back to Xander and Cordelia and Buffy can't help but feel like an outsider. Jenny says something that Buffy doesn't quite catch as she's lost in her thoughts. 

"I think it'll be safe for the children to go about," Giles replies. "Something like this tends to have psychic ripples that the paranormal set seem to feel. I suspect tonight will probably be a quieter night on the Hellmouth than most." 

"Let's go then," Cordelia says. 

"Wait!" Giles calls out. 

Cordelia pauses by the door. 

"Do you have crosses, stakes and holy water?" Giles asks. 

"I thought you said it'd be quieter?" Xander asks. 

"It should be but there's no reason to take risks, now is there?" 

Buffy watches as Giles and Jenny make sure the three teens are prepared for anything and she feels like maybe she should go with them. At the same time she feels oddly disconnected from the three of them. Willow tells her that she'll call tomorrow and Buffy replies but she can't recall what she said the minute the words have left her mouth. She feels numb. 

"Buffy, do you want us to drive you home?" Jenny asks. 

Before she can say anything, Angel is answering for her. 

"I'll walk her home," Angel tells them. 

She silently watches as Jenny and Giles leave the library together and she's glad that she gets to avoid the awkwardness of their flirting, She suspects that they'll either go to some bar downtown to have a few drinks or go to one of their homes and share a few drinks and maybe more with how fast they take their leave. 

And then it's just her and Angel. And she knows that she should feel excited about it but she feels like she's a million miles away. And she feels cold. Angel drapes his jacket over her shoulders before he guides her out of the library and the school. 

* * * 

They're silent as they make their way through the quiet and deserted streets of Sunnydale. She feels like they're ghosts. The thought makes her shudder slightly. Angel stops her and gazes at her.

"Things feel odd," Buffy tells him. "Like something is off." 

He looks down at her worried. And she's pretty sure that this isn't what Willow had in mind. Her friend probably though they'd find some quiet part of town and kiss underneath a starry sky. Buffy feels like doing anything but kissing. 

"How?" 

She can't quite explain it. Things hadn't felt like this after she had defeated Lothos in LA. 

"Like something's missing." 

It feels like there's a hole carved out in the middle of her body and that no matter what she does, she'll never feel whole again. Angel makes a noise that could be a sigh or something else. 

"Let's go get some coffee," Angel suggests. 

"I don't want to bother the others," Buffy tells him. 

He takes her hand in his much large one as he starts to lead her away from the direction of her home and towards what makes up downtown Sunnydale. 

"There's more than one place to get coffee late at night," Angel tells her, 

She feels safer when he pulls her closer and drapes an arm around her shoulders. It's almost as if she can pretend that she's a normal girl and he's a normal boy. 

* * * 

He takes her to a diner that looks like it's out of place with pretty much everything else in Sunnydale. It looks like it belongs closer to the bus depot in the bad part of town. When they enter the diner, it feels like it belongs in the 1950s than the 1990s. The bright white fluorescent lights overhead make her eyes hurt. Angel leads her to a booth with a red leather banquettes and a red Formica table. An older woman in a white uniform with an apron trimmed in pink comes to their table and sets down menus. 

Angel orders coffee for them both and the waitress leaves them alone. Buffy runs her hand on the faux leather cover of the menu. Part of her wants to know how Angel knows about this place. But that part feels buried underneath far too many layers of cotton wool. When the waitress come back, she sets down a bowl full of creamers along with napkins and spoons and two cups of coffee. 

"Can I get you two anything?" 

"A basket of your French fries," Angel orders. 

"That okay with you hun?" 

It takes Buffy a moment to realize the woman is speaking to her before she finally nods. 

"Yeah, thanks.' 

She leaves again and Angel pulls her cup of coffee over towards him. Buffy watches as he puts quite a bit of sugar in it and far too much cream before stirring it and then pushing it back towards Buffy.

'You should eat something and their French fries are really good," Angel tells her. 

"Okay," Buffy replies. 

She wants to know how he'd know that the fries taste good here. He's a vampire and she had always though that except for alcohol, vamps just stuck to blood. It makes her wonder what happens after they eat food. Do vampires go to the bathroom? And she scrunches her face in disgust. She really doesn't want to know. Willow would probably find the topic interesting and would ask Angel a hundred or more questions about it. Willow seems to want to know everything there is to know about the dead. 

And it hits her in that moment. She died earlier that night. She was dead .And now she's not. And she's never ever going to be able to tell her mom or anything about this. She doubts that Giles or her friends even understand. Do Willow and Giles even know that the Master had killed her? She raises a hand to her neck and touches the skin where his filthy hands had taken her life away earlier. It doesn't feel any different than it did before. 

But the fact remains the same, she had been alive and then she hadn't been and then she was again. She could have easily died and never woken up. Before she can say anything, their waitress is back and she's setting a basket of fries down in front of Buffy and a piece of pie in front of Angel. 

"I seem to recall that you liked it last time you were in hum."

Angel thanks her and the waitress leaves them alone. It all seems so normal, so mundane and she wants to stand on the table and scream that she had died but now she's alive again. She shivers. Angel looks at her. 

"I died earlier," Buffy tells him. "If it wasn't for you and Xander, I'd still be dead." 

She had whispered but the word sounds horribly loud in the quiet of the diner. It's like she's shouted the word dead for all to hear. 

"Dead," Buffy whispers again. 

The word still sounds oddly loud and it tastes foul in her mouth. 

"I _died_ ," Buffy tells him. 

Angel slips out of his side of the booth and moves to sit beside her. His arm wraps comfortingly around her waist and she suddenly feels like she's being anchored down. She doesn't feel like she'll float away or that she'll find herself still dead and not very much alive. He encourages her to eat and even though the food tastes pleasant and familiar, she can't shake the feeling that something is wrong. Horribly wrong. 

* * * 

Time doesn't seem to pass but when she looks up at the clock above the counter, she realizes that it's three in the morning. Her fries are long gone as is most of Angel's lemon meringue pie. 

"I should get you home," Angel tells her. 

"What am I going to tell my mom?" Buffy asks. "I can't tell her that I died earlier tonight. I can't tell _her_ anything about what I do." 

She looks away from Angel because she doesn't want to tell him about her how mom had sent her to a mental hospital when Buffy had tired to tell her about vampires. How every so often her mother gets a look on her face that makes Buffy worry about psychiatrists, medications, institutions, and feeling numb to everything. Her heart races in her chest. All that stuff is scary than the monsters that she faces most nights. Scarier than the fact that she had died earlier and it could have been permanent. 

"I am sure your mother will think that you just had too much fun at the dance," Angel reassures her. 

And it's probably true but how is she going to explain the water stain on her dress. The dress that they could ill afford to get. How is she going to explain anything? The only plus is that in a week's time, she'll be off to LA and her dad doesn't seem pay as close attention to him as her mom does. 

"But she's gonna to be mad about my dress. We could barely afford it and I know she'll probably expect me to wear it to another event or something. And it's pretty ruined. And then there's the whole it's so past my curfew and she's going to be mad about that. It's not as f I can just say to her _'Oh sorry Mom but I had to kill a master vamp tonight and avert the apocalypse and it was a lot harder this time around than the last time.'_ And there's no way that I can tell her that I died tonight, she'd get so angry." 

She's well aware of how she's babbling and how she's panicking but then Angel is placing his lips against her own. And she stops panicking and her heart races for very different reasons. When he pulls away from her, she looks up at him. 

'I died tonight," Buffy tells him. 

"I know." Angel softly replies. 

"And I can never tell my mom.' 

She doesn't tell him that if she can, she'll avoid telling Willow and Giles the truth as well. Or at least she'll give them only the bare minimum. 

"Even if you could, would you?" Angel asks her. 

Her eyes widen as she thinks about it. Even if she could tell her mom the truth about being a Slayer and that vampires and monsters are real. She imagines a world where Joyce Summers was supportive of her daughter being the Slayer. Even in that perfect, imaginary world, she doubts that she'd ever tell her mom that she had died. She doubts her mother that death is the only way it could end for a Slayer. 

Buffy shakes her head in denial. 

"Of course not," Buffy tells her. 

Angel sighs as his arm tightens around her. 

'You died but only for a moment," Angel tells her. "I could still _feel_ you." 

She gives him a small smile. She wants to say something glib about how she never saw a white light or anything similar but it feels wrong to do so.

"I don't know if what happened could really be called death,," Angel tells her. 

Buffy thinks about it and she thinks about the bits and pieces that knowledge that she's absorbed in her science classes or in the documentaries she's watched and she has to ask if she was even _really_ dead .And she doesn't really know. All she knows is that one moment she was there and then there's a blank space and then things were normal again. 

Does it even matter in the long wrong because the Master is dead and she's not? She still feels as if she's not fully complete but she pushes those thoughts away. When she yawns, Angel smiles down at her and Buffy pretends that it's not a sad smile. Instead she pretends that they are just a normal couple out on a late night date. 

"I should get you home," Angel tells her. 

She agrees with him. She pushes the confusing thoughts about her death aside. In the end, it doesn't matter. Angel helps her out of the booth and she watches as he puts money down on the table for the food and coffee. When they make their way back out to the street, she pulls him close to her and leans up to kiss him. His lips taste like coffee and pie. And it makes her feel like they're nothing more than a normal girl and boy. In that moment, he's not a vampire and she's not a Slayer and they're not on borrowed time .

When he pulls away from her, she smiles up at him and wishes this moment would last forever. She's alive and nothing else really matters.


End file.
